This invention relates to a molding apparatus and method, and is particularly applicable to pultrusion molding.
According to prior art pultrusion processes, multiple resin impregnated fibers are pulled through a mold cavity as defined by at least one pultrusion die. This causes consolidation of the resin impregnated fibers and consequent molding of the final article to the desired shape. Most preferably, the resin impregnated fibers are first passed through a "hot" die, in which most if not all of the consolidation takes place, and are then passed through a "cooling" die in which the molded article is cooled.
Heretofore, the versatility of pultrusion die equipment has been very limited. For example, if a different molded shape was desired, new dies would be fabricated which define mold cavities of the desired shape. Fabrication of such new dies is very labor intensive as well as expensive. Or, if simultaneous production of multiple pultruded articles was desired, additional dies were positioned in a side-by-side relationship. However, such multiple article production required time consuming alignment of each of the additional dies.